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There are others here on the beach, standing and staring at the border wall as the ocean tides crash and spray. I've met so many now who have been separated from their partners, parents, and children, those physical bonds forcibly torn with little possibility of reconnection.

The pantomime serves a purpose. Politicians denouncing Anning for his explicit support of fascism distracts from years of slightly more democratic, somewhat less in-your-face ethnonationalism. Sieg heils in St Kilda are bad, offshore internment camps are necessary.

The world sat gripped as Rahaf al-Qunun live-tweeted her mad dash to freedom, then cheered when photos of her being escorted from Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi airport by UN workers emerged. Hakeem al-Araibi has not been so lucky. His current nightmare is emblematic of the bureaucratic mess forced on refugees worldwide.

In this season, I usually re-read A Christmas Carol, that timeless tour de force of the Dickensian imagination. The second spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Present, takes Scrooge to the shops, where the former restores good humour to squabbling delivery boys. For, they said, it was a shame to quarrel on Christmas Day.

The point of the involvement of God in the minute details of human life is to assert the value of the human world in all its relationships. This means that the customs and practices of our Australian Christmas should not be dismissed as a corrupted and so inferior version of the Christian celebration. They should be appreciated in their own right.

At twelve, halfway through too many stifling hours crammed in the Holden station wagon, three girls munch Mum's ham sandwiches in a Rotary park ... At thirty, waifs-and-strays Christmases with friends in our adopted southern city.

I cannot help but think about the level of cognitive dissonance required to believe you hold not only the rights to an entire holiday, but also the moral high ground, all while occupying buildings built on stolen lands. The migration of this celebration to this continent did not happen in isolation from the violence of invasion and colonisation.

Scoring the performance of the Australian church is a complex task at any time. Dioceses and congregations vary enormously. The mission of church agencies continues unabated in education, health, social services and aged care. But by any measure 2018 has been a big year.

James had come to the maths coaching because he'd been in trouble at work. He had to stack crates to a certain level at the workshop but was unable to count them, making the unloading impossible for people without his height and strength. He needed to learn to count.

Eighty years ago today, 77-year-old Yorta Yorta elder walked ten kilometres to deliver a letter to the German consulate protesting the attacks on Jewish people during Kristallnacht nearly a month earlier. Despire the dire circumstances faced by Aboriginal people at the time, Cooper's conscience couldn't ignore the suffering of others.

You never will know all ... You'd have to be everywhere at once, be behind and in every word and act, flow with the charged breath of mote and light. To sum up: You'd have to be God. Poor Thing. For the one fact denied God is the unforeseen.

Airborne pollution is an issue of environmental justice, because it disproportionately affects those with the least capacity to move — the poor, the marginalised, and those, such as Indigenous peoples, with a significant relationship to place.